Optimizing the Field Service Experience for Your Customers and Your Service Techs

When we talk about optimizing the field service experience for your customers and your service technicians, we’re actually talking about two sides of the same coin – the giving and the receiving ends of your field services. Furthermore, the technologies that improve one side of the coin are the same technologies that improve the other side of the coin. Here’s how.

Dispatching the Right People with the Right Equipment

Deploying field service management (FSM) software exponentially increases the potential for dispatching the right technician with the right equipment to your customer site. A simple scenario can serve as an example of how this works. A customer calls your help desk and says: “My computer just crashed. Please send someone over right away to fix it.” Prior to the availability of FSM software, your help desk person could easily send a MAC computer expert on a truck filled with MAC computer replacement parts to a customer site where only Windows PCs are in use. The end result would have been an irate customer and a service tech who now has to deal with that irate customer, or in other words, two unhappy sides of the same coin.

With FSM software in place, the help desk has immediate access not only to the type of computer equipment that this client is running, but also to the service history of that account, the parts inventory on the truck that’s being dispatched, the customer’s service contract, and the service expertise of each technician. The end result will be a happy customer and a happy, not to mention productive, technician.

Prioritizing Service vs. Brand

Recent studies have shown that service trumps brand. That’s just another way of saying that brand loyalty is no longer a given, and customers are in fact more likely to choose service over brand, which explains why many top brands are placing such a high premium on the customer experience. Several areas of FSM functionality that contribute to a better customer experience include the ability to:

• Manage and maintain the accuracy and simplicity of service contracts, which in turn drives faster, more accurate billing
• Predict and proactively prevent breakdowns
• Address issues faster by monitoring devices remotely
• Provide a central view for product usage, issues, and repair history
• Identify under-performing or faulty equipment
• Improve first-time fix rates

Increasing Customer Engagement

When organizations transform the typical onsite care experience into positive customer engagements, they build loyalty, encourage brand advocacy, and improve their bottom line. At the same time, technology has given companies more direct access to customers, making it easier to provide the personalized service that customers appreciate now more than ever before.